<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Dust in the Sea by lamesister</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29599104">Dust in the Sea</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/lamesister/pseuds/lamesister'>lamesister</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Gen, Or maybe a hopeful one?, no happy ending</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 02:07:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,848</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29599104</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/lamesister/pseuds/lamesister</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Percy doesn’t know it yet, but his world starts to end when aliens invade New York for the second time.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Nico di Angelo &amp; Percy Jackson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>123</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Dust in the Sea</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Percy doesn’t know it yet, but his world starts to end when aliens invade New York for the second time. He watches it on the news, sleepy two-year old Estelle in his arms, and his mom tense on his right. Paul’s at work.</p>
<p>Then the space donut leaves, taking the Spider-boy?-man? (who Annabeth will never admit she is freaked out by) and Iron Man with it. When the footage is put on loop for a third time, he glances at his mom. Her face is drawn and pale, but she sits like a pillar. Her eyes are glued to the newscast.</p>
<p>She had lived through the Invasion of New York, which had happened only three months before his own Battle of New York. Percy had been gloriously unaware of what was happening, unconscious in the Infirmary in the Apollo Cabin at Camp Half-Blood. When he woke up, Annabeth had been frantically shaking his shoulder. Two hours later, they were back in New York, hastily making their way to his apartment. His mom and Paul were fine, thankfully, but-- Well, alien invasion. Unfortunately for her, she’s had experience with the ugly and unusual. </p>
<p>Percy smiles softly. He gets up to put Estelle in her bed (she point-blank refuses the crib.)</p>
<p>They’ll be fine. </p>
<p>-----</p>
<p>Later, he hears news of spacecrafts over Africa. He worries some, but he figures good old Earth has been through worse. Still, the nagging feeling lingers.</p>
<p>-----</p>
<p>Percy isn’t even anywhere important when it happens. He’s in a crowd, crossing the street, when the woman in front of him starts fading into ash. </p>
<p>His sword is in his hand before he can process that it’s happening <i>everywhere</i>. More people in the street are becoming nothing but ash piles, cars are crashing, and <i>Styx</i> he has to get to a better location. A helicopter careens into a building; it goes up in flames with a boom that sends shockwaves through the street. Glass is raining down on the road below when the thought hits him.</p>
<p>Mom. Estelle. Paul. <i>Annabeth.</i></p>
<p>He fumbles for a drachma, then dodges a car with no driver and a petrified looking kid in the backseat. He drops the coin, his only one, and it goes down the damn sewer drain. </p>
<p>His curse is drowned by the sirens, screams, and crashing of half of-- of everything, <i>everything</i> dying.</p>
<p>Next he looks, the kid is gone, and he’ll never know it was from the kid leaving the car or turning to ash.</p>
<p>-----</p>
<p>Percy is half way back to the apartment, phone lines overridden, dodging cars, and pulling mortals to their feet when the sound of crashing waves and ocean storms slam into the back of his mind. </p>
<p>He can hear a hurricane forming in the Atlantic, a cyclone in the Pacific. The seabed rumbles off the coast of Japan, the waters are clouding with ash as sea life dies too, and there’s a herd of horses somewhere near Mexico in absolute panic. </p>
<p>He feels the vastness of the sea open up before him, a storm breaking open in the Gulf of Mexico, and the deepest cold of the Mariana Trench.</p>
<p>He drops to his knees, clutching his head, and shaking from the overload of <i>awareness</i> and <i>power.</i></p>
<p>He knows instantly that Poseidon is dead. </p>
<p>It’s his last thought before his world goes black.</p>
<p>-----</p>
<p>He awakens in the Apollo Cabin. The ocean crashes in his head, sun blinds his eyes, and he hastens to sit up, dread a tight knot in his chest. He doesn’t make it far before black spots the corners of his vision and he crashes back down on the bunk. He groans, and a weight previously unnoticed on his legs shifts and moves.</p>
<p>He glances down. A mop of black hair is rising, giving way to a pale face with sunken and worrying blank eyes.</p>
<p>“Nico,” Percy croaks, “<i>Nico</i>.” His breathing is tight and he struggles to focus on the person in front of him and not the sea life in the Great Barrier Reef or the tropical storm in the Atlantic. </p>
<p>Nico blinks at him, and in an instant, the blankness leaves his face, being replaced by undeniable <i>grief</i>. </p>
<p>Percy tries to blink away the tears of frustration and anticipation away because he suffered through two wars, <i>goddammit</i>, but never had he seen anything like what he just witnessed. “<i>Who?</i>” he finally manages around the tightness in his throat.</p>
<p>It seems to snap Nico out of his reverie. He looks up, then away. He blinks a few times, shifting his gaze, eventually settling somewhere on Percy’s left. Nico sighs, a deep, bone-weary sound, and rubs his eyes. “Half.”</p>
<p>“Half?” Percy asks. Demands. He tries to rise again, getting as far as his elbows before thunder erupting in a cyclone in the Pacific distracts him and he falls back to the flat of his back. He hits the bed in frustration.</p>
<p>Nico still won’t look at him. “Of everyone,” he says hoarsely, “The whole universe.”</p>
<p>Any coherent thought leaves him in a rush. He stares absentmindedly at the bunk above him, listening to the oceans and white noise of all sea life in his ears. When a thought finally works its way back into his head the position of the sun has changed and it was no longer in his eyes. </p>
<p>“Nico, <i>who?</i>” he asks, demands again. He ignores the noticeable absences in the cabin, because that would mean-- that would mean--</p>
<p>If possible, Nico crumples further. He rubs his eyes again. They’re dry, Percy notes. He wonders if Nico had already used up all his tears, leaving him an empty, heartbroken shell. “...Frank. Hazel, Piper, Calypso. Others. Some gods. Poseidon, Zeus.” He swallows, “Will. ...Your mom and Annabeth.”</p>
<p>Percy closes his eyes and misses whatever Nico says next, if anything. Mom. Annabeth. Annabeth, <i>Annabeth.</i> Wise Girl. A chasm opens up below him, drowning out all the sounds of the oceans, of a too-quiet Camp, of distant earthquakes. It gaps, and pulls, and reminds him of nothingness, of a place more desolate that Tartarus. He’s shaking, he notes distantly, warm, salty tears leaking down his face. </p>
<p>He struggles for breath; he has been since Tartarus. He sucks in air raggedly, a hand lurching for Nico. A cold hand greets his, squeezes. And Percy just cries, there in the Apollo Cabin, with only Nico and Death around him for company.</p>
<p>-----</p>
<p>Later, after he falls asleep to his world having ended, he wakes up to a dark, shadow-filled cabin. He feels heavy, head stuffed with cotton, and the breaking and crashing of waves is dulled for a moment. </p>
<p>Nico is still there and his dark eyes watch Percy tiredly. They’re pinched, and Percy knows he has more bad news.</p>
<p>“What,” he croaks hoarsely, finally able to sit up against the back of the bed.</p>
<p>There’s that tick again, Nico rubbing his eyes. Like if he clears his vision hard enough, the horror will go away. “They…” he moves his hand in a circle at the wrist, a motion meant to encompass all of-- <i>them</i>, “They. They never-- Never reached it. The Underworld.”</p>
<p>Percy blinks, but he doesn’t really feel the words. What they mean. He’s gloriously, horribly, numb. He just asks, “How? Are--” And he’d feel bad for asking, because Nico clearly doesn’t want to even <i>think</i> about it, let alone say it, but. </p>
<p>“They’re-- They are <i>dead!</i>” Nico stands harshly, the chair he seemingly hadn’t moved from banging against the floor. It echoes throughout the empty cabin, and Percy doesn’t want to think about what the emptiness could mean. “I <i>felt</i> it, Percy! And they’re not <i>there</i>! I-- I don’t-- They didn’t get Elysium! They got-- Emptiness! Nothingness-- It’s like they just <i>ceased</i> to be! Percy, I--”</p>
<p>“Nico,” he interrupts because he doesn't want to hear anymore, doesn't want to <i>think</i>, think about how-- “Nico.” He reaches out, grabs Nico by the arm. </p>
<p>Nico <i>collapses</i>, curling up on top of Percy, head resting on Percy’s shoulder. He’s shaking, they both are, but neither of them are crying. Nico’s arms wrap around Percy, and he reciprocates, squeezing him hard enough that he wouldn’t be surprised if Nico bruises. </p>
<p>He just stares into the empty shadows and wonders if this feeling will ever go away. </p>
<p>-----</p>
<p>It’s later. Days, definitely. Weeks, probably. He went home. Saw Paul and Estelle. Left. The <i>Avengers</i> gave a press conference, explaining what happened. A fight in Wakanda. Aliens with powers greater than the gods. A <i>Snap.</i> </p>
<p>He met with the remaining gods. Of the Olympians and Big Three, those left were Hades, Hera, Athena, Apollo, Aphrodite, Hermes, and Hephaestus. Olympus was in chaos, disarray. Hades and Hera had witheringly agreed for a co-rule right now. Percy has little faith it will hold. </p>
<p>Percy had been put in charge, in <i>rule</i>, of those attributes Poseidon had been previously. (He was the only one left able to. Always him.) He hadn’t said no, but had again denied immortality, and the ocean noises were now an ever-present symphony in the back of his mind. Power thrummed beneath his fingertips, static, and more than once he had set off minor earthquakes in the middle of the night. </p>
<p>And now. Now, he’s in an unfamiliar part of upstate New York. (All of which, he supposes, is unfamiliar.) The facility before him is modern and sleek, all curves and no edges. </p>
<p>Annabeth would have loved it.</p>
<p>He stares at it another second, before eventually making his way down the long road. (He had <i>vapour travelled</i> there, a new and starling skill he discovered somewhere between contacting Rayna and visiting Atlantis.) </p>
<p>People are already at the door, staring at him piercingly through the cover of glass, long before he ever arrives. There are three that he can immediately see-- A tall, broad man with two different colored eyes, who feels faintly of ozone even through the glass. A woman with platinum hair, green eyes dissecting and with at least five knives he can count on her body. And another tall, broad, and blonde man, and this is the only one of them that he can immediately name, recognizable from history books. </p>
<p>Captain America, Steve Rogers. </p>
<p>He’s not as unreal in the flesh, Percy thinks, and certainly not after having faced down gods, titans, and giants and come out on the other side the successor.</p>
<p>“State your name, business, and how you got here,” says the woman through the speaker. Logic, his brain, who sounds suspiciously like a certain daughter of Athena-- and oh, that sends a pang through his chest-- dictates that she’s Black Widow, Natasha Romanoff. </p>
<p>“Percy Jackson,” he says, and recognition lights the first man’s eyes, “the Last Blood of Poseidon. I’m here to help you kill Thanos and if possible, get everyone back.” They stare at him, eyes portraying a faint sense of disbelief. “And I teleported, essentially.” </p>
<p>At the first man’s prodding, they let him in. </p>
<p>It’s a start, he thinks, of getting his world back. He’s dealt with gods, titans, and giants. </p>
<p>What’s an alien the color of a grape against that?</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>